My Oak Tree

About Me

My first love is poetry, but I wear lots of hats. I also write children's books,I am Director of after school and summer arts programming at two elementary schools, and I teach writing at the Arvada Center for Arts and Humanities. I'm married to a gifted artist, Scott H.Johnson, and I have an amazing 10-year old daughter. My children's book, Best Friend on Wheels was published by Albert Whitman & Company in 2008. Other work has been included in The Cortland Review, Margie Review: The American Journal of Poetry, The Adirondack Review and the Playwright's Showcase of the Western Region.

Dragging my brother John, forest to forest, tree to tree, in search of the perfect Christmas tree, the perfect fall leaf, a crystal, a geode, some moss to sit on, to dream on, to take home in a bag, make a terrarium. The smell of spongy forest floor, that fragrance of humus our only inheritance. Fiddle neck ferns sprout through and around the bowing floorboards of the old Beck House porch. Out back, the fading remains of once glorious gardens, stone arches crumble into a luscious field of daffodils & paper-whites, narcissus & stray grape hyacinths. We gather them up, loading each other’s arms overfull, balance on sloped feet along the lip of the stone fountain, scoot through the leaning coach house, splat through the trickling branch, spill some flowers for the sake of catching a turtle, sprint home laughing, noses yellow with daffodil pollen.